Now, you're probably wondering what Facebook means by "texting" - they mean the app will send SMS notifications of your messages to people who aren't using the app but are on your friends list, and have their mobile phone number listed on their profile. And they have to opt in to this feature in the first place. Which, honestly, seems utterly useless. Really, it sounds more like they're just calling using Facebook Messenger "texting" in order to confuse / lure the less technically inclined into using it. Shady much?

And, of course, you'll still have two Messenger icons, one for the standard Facebook app's Messenger, and one for the standalone Messenger app. Gee Facebook, thanks for clogging my app drawer.

Basically, all you need to know is that Facebook Messenger now has a feature that shows you if someone has read messages you've sent them - that's really all that's changed. And they're trying to trick your mom into thinking it's equivalent to SMS messaging with the new description, and by placing it right next to the stock Android Messaging app. Thanks, Facebook - you stay classy.

Yet another reason I'm pretty sure they only implemented it to confuse people into believing Facebook is now the same thing as "texting" on their smartphone. Could they have made it more difficult? Jeesh.

shonangreg

Is use of SMS from a phone transparent through the whole process? Can i send a facebook message to them, they get it as an SMS, and then reply as an SMS and it come back to me as a facebook message?

Not that I would trust facebook with any messages anyway. They'll sell anything they can get their hands on; they'll figure out a way to let their spammers, er, advertisers, put up spam-traps that are indistinguishable from messages; they'll make sure to pester me to install apps that can impersonate me and carry on the family tradition; and to top it all off, they'll have the worst threading and organizing features in their messaging apps and will seemingly randomly fail to send me email notifications of messages when they arrive or push messages into an "other" folder that I also randomly check.

There's a little geolocation icon that lets you toggle it on and off. Tags each message with your location until you turn it off. You can look at the map of the last shared location of your friends in a conversation. That's what way it is for me now, and always has been.

I think it is more about spying on our text messages as FB now gets access to that.

I really wish Google would allow us to reduce application permissions after an app has been installed. That way, I could fool FB into thinking it could get everything from my phone while it in fact were just looking at dummy data.

Secondly, Google Play now places app reviews of old versions below reviews of the current version. This means that there is no way to warn others about these constant creeps in permission requirements unless you install the damn thing yourself.

The whole app permission system in Android needs to be overhauled, because as it is now, FB, Linkedin, and others will slowly harvest every piece of information in my phone. Well, the LinkedIn app will be uninstalled when my current "old" version stops working.

I'm a bit rushed to track it down, but somebody on XDA Developers created an app that could do something like this. I'm not sure how it worked exactly or if it's still functional on ICS, but it was able to revoke permissions after an app was installed. Obviously, root was required.

Davy Jones

Maybe Pdroid? You can also check out LBE. I agree with FlexPlexico, though, this shouldn't be left to root apps and ROM patches.

I'm right there with ya...I think Google learned after the 1.x days that permissions were sorta broken as they were. They tried to clean them up and make them friendlier in 2.x, but that didn't work and I kinda thought they would have wised up with 3.x/4.x, but that obviously didn't happen. Of course, it's still better than what happens with iOS or WP right now.

taher

bienio

Alliee

How do I change it back? I don't like it.

Gaurav Sharma

No more FB apps please.. The Facebook official app was horrible.. I am still not over of it.. and you guys just launched another one..

sandy

Hey how can you get the 1.7 for the Facebook messenger back? I do not like the 3.3 ...